2008-10-31

I have long been interested in the work of what academics call the minimalists (Steve Reich, Phillip Glass being the two obvious examples). I never fully understood how it was that they could compose such brilliantly complex pieces. Also never truly understood why it was called minimalism.

All that changed one day when I stumbled across this video. That started me on a series of pieces. The latest of which starts as a simple canon.

A simple 4 bar melody in C minor across 4 different keyboard-y sounds. That MIDI data is simultaneously feed to other tracks with other sounds that I bring in, adjust and arpeggiate.

2008-10-29

In the late eighties our band, Two Infant Children, recorded our works on an 8-track 1/4" deck (Fostex Model 80). For years, I wondered what those old recordings sounded like. Now I have a chance to find out. My band-mate Ralph managed to dig the Fostex gear and a few reels of tape out of a closet it's all been living in for the last 20 years.

I'm transferring the tapes to an old G3 running ProTools (the 8 tracks going into a Digi001). From there it'll go a faster machine running Logic where the archeology will really begin.

Of course, while doing the initial transfer, I couldn't help but have a listen...

2008-10-23

Ever bought a CD (or downloaded a bunch of tracks) and never reallylistened to them. Or perhaps you didn't like them at first? And thenjust move on relegating that music so the unheard/skipped part of yourmusic collection...

Today, my iTunes "Party Shuffle" shuffled onto "Part Two" by the PatMetheny Group (from The Way Up release). I was busy working andpaid no attention when it came on but somewhere in the middle (it's a20 minute opus) it just grabbed me. Hard. This is great! wtf?!?What is it?

To my amazement (and shame) it's a CD I bought in February '06. Sofor over 2 years, I've been ignoring this album. Stunning. Betterlate than never, I guess.

Seems sad that people slave over their music and even their ardentfans don't pay attention.

So a challenge for you. In your music player, order your musiccollection by the Last Played date, with the never played at the top.Press play and be amazed.

2008-10-22

My adult professional life has been spent involved in making computersoftware in one form or another. Back in the '90s I ran into a littleprogram that played mp2 files. Not mp3 but mp2. A little moredigging yielded program that would convert CD data into an mp2 file.

At the time, this was mind blowing. A song as a file on a disk?Little did I know.

I've always had a substantial music collection so I busily set aboutwriting scripts to convert my CDs to mp2 files. The encoder was crazyslow. It would take about 20 minutes per song. So my scripts ranmultiple encoders on various idle cpus in the office. Eventually, I(and my colleagues) had built a collection of about 16GB. Peanuts bytoday's standards but we did this on disk that was priced at more thana dollar per MB.

Now the mp2 player was not like what we have now. It was a commandline thing that just played a single file. Which meant I had to writea program that would allow the user to play music from our collection.

I set out to write the simplest thing that did what I wanted. Itwould have a pause/play button, next, previous. It would play tracksin a random order. It would not repeat. That was the first version.Basically a very oversized shuffle (a file server, my workstation andsome networking gear). (For the language geeks, I did this GUI indtksh which was essentially ksh with hooks to the Xt toolkit)

Now listening to your collection in shuffle mode is fine butoccasionally something comes on from the middle of a great album worklike, say, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. You didn't know ituntil that moment but you want to listen to the whole album. So Iadded a button called "This Album".

Clicking "This Album" would stop shuffling and play the album fromstart to finish and then resume shuffling at the song after the onethat caused you to hit the button in the first place. Thenext/previous buttons now moved through the tracks of that release.

Fast forward a decade or more and I have that much music and more onmy iPod which normally lives in my car and plays in shuffle mode. Iam stunned to think that in all that time nobody else has had thisidea. Why do I need to risk a car crash when I decide that I want tolisten to all of Radiohead's OK Computer, just because Let Down justcame on planting the idea...

There are those asking today if the album is dead. Perhaps "ThisAlbum" might help.

2008-10-12

This week I finally took the plunge and bought myself some real studiomonitors. To this point, I have been mixing on a collection ofheadphones with an occasional mix check in my car. Sort of funnybecause what I've spent on various headphones would have bought somepretty nice monitors.

Suspense killing you? Well ultimately I decided on the Samson Rubicon R5a.

Picking monitors is hard. Really hard. In the modern age of on-lineshopping, a decent store with a big selection for you to listen to abunch in a decent acoustic environment is a hard thing to find. Theeconomics probably don't support a store "doing it right". So I'vebeen going really slow. Reading reviews in magazines (Computer Music,Future Music and Sound on Sound being my faves); dropping into storesand having a listen to something; getting confused; repeat. I've hadoccasion to visit a Guitar Centre in San Jose and they have an OKselection and you can listen to a bunch... of course, unless youbring music with you that you know well you'll soon be confused. Ilikened the process to choosing a wine. Within a price range, mostare good but each has its own character... Lucky for me, I live inCanada and making an impulse buy in California was not in the cards.

My first criteria was price. My mental limit was $500CAN. I got tohear some really nice Dynaudio monitors that were more than doublethat and I just ruled them out. Many people rave about Genelecs, Inever even tried for reasons of price. Maybe I'm wrong, whatever.

For that price range, I could have got some M-Audio BX8a's.Initially, I was lured by bigger speakers. I read somewhere thatunless I had a big room, they'd likely overpower the room. Knowingwhat I know now, I'm glad I went small.

But I went to hear them in several places and each time they soundeddifferent... Basically, the acoustics of the store you're in play ahuge role in your perception. Distressing for sure. Eventually Idecided that I couldn't really trust the store experience and I shouldjust make a decision. I'd probably learn to love whatever I chose.

Now, presumably the guys writing for the magazines know at least alittle bit more than me and until I know enough to thumb my nose atthem, I might as well look at what they like. The Rubicon's have beenFuture Music's Editors' Choice for a while so I thought seriouslyabout them. I found a place in the city where I could hear them.They sounded awesome. Not hugely better than any other speaker but"just right". Now here's the part I feel guilty about... I boughtthem from another store that was closer to home cause was too lazy todrive into the city (carrying a monitor box on transit is not my ideaof fun). The reason I feel guilty is that the store in the city dideverything right. The store I bought at is staffed by lovely peoplebut their economics just don't support a wall o' speakers forcustomers to sample from.

So finally I have real monitors. What's it like?

One word. Awesome.

But I have some observations.

First. They're loud. They go to eleven but I'm running them at one.I'm so glad I didn't get 8 inch units. My room isn't very large andturns out it doesn't take very many watts to make 80dB SPL in such aspace.

Second. I put my old computer speakers, which weren't completelyterrible on top of the monitors. That raises them off my desk by about13-14 inches. Wow what a difference! You might save yourself a tonof money just by raising your crap speakers up off your desk to earlevel (form an equilateral triangle with your head at one corner).What this tells me is that I really really really need speaker standsfor the Rubicons.

Third. The low bandwidth (128) mp3s in my collection sound like ass onthe new speakers. Up to now I've been suspicious of the variousclaims that mp3s (and all things digital) suck. You've heard it too.Well, they are right. It's just you need to invest in some decentplayback equipment (and a quiet room) to hear the difference. Butlittle by little we've been sold increasingly inferior audio gear.And we've been buying it. I am not an audiophile. And I'm definitelynot a snob about this stuff. But it's possible that I'll becomeone...

This last point actually creates several problems. One is disk space.Now I'm thinking that I want everything in lossless formats. Who canafford the disk space. My music collection is something like 9500tracks (small by some standards, I know) weighing in at some 60-70GB.Multiply by 10 (approx) for a lossless format. So now I need aterabyte iPod? Pretty sure that el Jobso isn't working on one ofthose...

The other problem is how to think about my own mixes. I'vere-listened to some of my previous mixes with the Rubicons and myfeelings are, well, mixed. Some stand up but alarmingly others sucklarge donkey balls. They were good enough through my iPod headphonesand in the car. Now I gotta redo them. Is it worth the trouble?Paraphrasing McCain, I'll get back to you on that.